Our friend Jill Reynolds, who has died of cancer aged 64, gave a lifetime of service to social work and academia.

Born in St Albans, Hertfordshire, and educated at Watford girls' grammar school, Jill studied sociology and politics at Bristol University and qualified as a social worker. She worked in London and Bristol from 1971 until 1979, then ran a project for Vietnamese refugees in Yorkshire and went with Save the Children to Australia. After teaching social work at Bristol University for three years, from 1990 she was lecturer, and from 2001 senior lecturer, at the Open University, where she developed a number of key distance learning programmes in managing health and social care and mental health.

Jill's sharp mind, clear thinking and grasp of detail made her an excellent course leader who could be relied on to develop new material from scratch, assist the team to complete tasks on time and ensure they met tight deadlines. Once she was able to clear some time for research, she completed the PhD which became her book The Single Woman: A Discursive Investigation (2008). One of the reviewers saw it as "the inaugural book for the field of singleness". Jill was planning new research on the experiences of childless women in old age, which completed the first stage for European funding, before her diagnosis of cancer.

After moving to Oxfordshire, Jill met and later married Dave Wallace and together they enjoyed long cycling trips, singing at the local folk club, intrepid travelling and their house in France. Jill kept in close touch with her friends from all stages of her life and ensured she was available to them whenever they were in need.

Jill faced the prospect of a foreshortened life with characteristic vigour. She brought her many friends together for a celebration of her life, commenting that it was a pity that most people were not there to hear what was said at their funerals and wrote a blog about her experiences. Jill was a "completer-finisher", submitting her last two Spanish assignments for a modern languages degree only weeks before she died.

She is survived by Dave, her brother Ian and his wife, Gill, and her nieces Christina and Frances.